A hotel with history – PART 1

07/01/2015
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General

There is a lot of modernization going on at the Platzl Hotel at the moment - the website, conference rooms, body care products, bikes and much more. The aim of course is to meet all the standards of a modern, contemporary hotel. However, what we should not forget during this work and what sets us apart from many other hotels in the Bavarian capital is that the Platzl is and remains a traditional hotel and all those decades of tradition are actively embraced and being deliberately incorporated into any modernization. That is why we would like to tell you a little bit more about the history of the Platzl hotel in our magazine to mark its foundation in July, 59 years ago. In the first part you find out about the building’s history from 1780 to 1956.

Its heyday as a stage

The name “Platzl” already appears on city maps from the year 1780 and it is still used in many different contexts. The people of Munich call both, the lanes opening out onto the small-scale piazza and our traditional hotel, the “Platzl”, and nostalgists still talk about the “Grand Restaurant Platzl” today. Great comedians like Karl Valentin entertained an enthusiastic Munich audience there from the end of the 19th century to the middle of the Second World War. Shortly after the end of the war, the entertainment business was started up again but rather temporarily as the building had suffered serious damage during the war. It therefore wasn’t a surprise that the Platzl had to close in 1951 due to danger of collapsing.

The Inselkammer era

No businessman wanted to take on the risk of an investment in the dilapidated state that the building complex on the Platzl piazza was in at that time. Nobody except Franz Inselkammer. The owner of the small Ayinger brewery just outside Munich decided to reconstruct the traditional building. However, the new concept was not just restricted to a restaurant with theatre stage. A hotel was to be built on the Platzl piazza. The new edition of the Platzl stages in 1953 under the new tenants Carl and Hilde Groß was a total success and also paved the way to a successful start for the Platzl hotel in 1956.

You can find out what happened after the opening soon in the second part – here in the Platzl magazine of course.